


There's Been a Wonderfully Odd Chain of Events

by jumbled_sentiment



Series: Chain of Events [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Detective Alec Lightwood, Lawyer Magnus Bane, M/M, Murder Mystery, Solving crimes, from colleagues to tentative friends to oops i think i love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:26:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26027935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumbled_sentiment/pseuds/jumbled_sentiment
Summary: “Wait, hold on!”“DS Lightwood,” he called over his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be talking to me, and I know that you know that.”Alec swore under his breath, forced to throw caution to the wind else this all be for nothing. “I only need a minute.”
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Chain of Events [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106459
Comments: 56
Kudos: 203





	1. Thomas Sydney is Innocent

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> I'm on day 5 of 7 without wifi. The first few days were bearable because I was back in work for the first time since March, but now my brain is starting to rot. I've read my book, used all of my 3G, ate way too many cinnamon rolls and listened to all of the (limited) albums downloaded onto my phone so much that I'm starting to hate them. I actually considered going for a walk earlier just for something to do. So, what I'm trying to say is, comments are always appreciated, but this time they'd be extra appreciated as every last drop of human interaction is filling up my quickly draining sanity. 
> 
> I'm currently using my work's phone as a hotspot to upload this (don't tell). I was going to wait until I had more of it written before starting to upload, but it was either this or drinking copious amounts of alcohol, turning my speakers up to full volume and hoping that the neighbours come have a go at me to turn it down just for someone to talk to.
> 
> Happy reading!

Alec Lightwood silenced his alarm with a sharp swipe and dropped his phone onto the covers. He tucked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. There was a spider's web stretching between his curtain and the light fitting, something that he’d been meaning to get to for weeks now. It was on his list, right below the task of replacing the curtain rail that had torn from the wall months ago and had been hanging by a thread ever since. The sunlight glaring through the gap had irritated him at first, but as the darkness of winter seeped further in with each passing day, the issue became easier to ignore.

Often, Alec struggled to find the right combination of spare time and motivation that was required to tackle the growing list of menial jobs around the flat, not to mention his distaste for parting with hard-earned money for no good reason. Some might say that a heating system that only worked in sporadic bursts would constitute as a good reason, but Alec’s argument was that it still worked some of the time. Replacing it before it was completely broken would be a waste in his eyes, which was the exact eccentricity that had led to the bitter cold beneath Alec’s bed sheets that morning. He shuddered at the thought of how exponentially worse the temperature was going to be when he wasn’t wrapped in a duvet, but that wasn’t the main reason for his reluctance. 

For more years than he could count on one hand, Alec hadn’t managed an uninterrupted night’s sleep, but last night had been particularly difficult. His anxiety over what needed to happen today certainly hadn’t helped. Even on a good day, balancing the pressures of his job with those that came from within him was a challenge. He shifted under the covers, running a hand through his short black hair. His mission for the day was clear, but he was more than aware that it would be professional suicide if every step of his plan wasn’t flawlessly executed. It didn’t matter that NYPD was about to put an innocent man in prison, Alec couldn’t be the one to inform people of that fact. 

When Detective Sergeant Alec Lightwood had stumbled across evidence to suggest that NYPD’s prime suspect hadn’t committed the crime he was accused of, he had taken the appropriate course of action and approached DI Larrimore, the senior investigating officer on the case. Larrimore had shut him down mere sentences into the conversation. Their suspect fit the profile, couldn’t provide an alibi and had one of the most clear-cut motives he’d ever seen. There was sufficient evidence to convict, and convict is what they were going to do. Alec’s stomach clenched, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since around noon the day before. His appetite had vanquished in the aftermath of his discovery, an ATM camera placing their prime suspect halfway across the city less than twenty minutes before the victim’s approximate time of death. It wasn’t enough to prove his innocence, but it had been enough to cast significant doubt across Alec’s mind. 

With a heavy sigh, he slid out from underneath the duvet and made a beeline for the fleece-lined dressing gown hanging on the back of his door. It had been a gift from his sister when she’d realised that he had no intention of fixing his apartment’s temperature problem. He’d thanked her with an eye roll, but it had quickly become one of his most prized possessions. Marching into the bathroom, Alec flicked on the light and caught his own reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t a surprise to see the blue of his iris’s rimmed red, the usual signs of an especially frustrating night of tossing and turning. He pulled apart the top of his dressing gown and opened the bathroom cabinet, only to slam it shut with a sigh when he remembered he’d forgotten to add shaving foam to his shopping list. Alec liked the dark shadow of stubble along his jaw, but he despised not being clean shaven in court. He tutted as he reached for the electric razor, resigning himself to the half-finished job it produced. 

Alec knew what needed to be done, he just couldn’t convince himself that he was the right man for the job. Finished with the razor, he twisted the shower handle and speedily shed the layers before diving beneath the cold spray. The droplets of ice sent shivers down his spine, but it was preferable to wasting both water and time waiting for it to heat. It was yet another eccentricity of Alec’s that others would label idiotic, but it seemed like common sense to him. By the time the water resembled an acceptable temperature; Alec was washing the last of the lather from his hair. Stepping out of the shower, he grabbed a towel from the railing and wrapped it around his waist. With his spare hand, he grabbed his phone from beside the sink and scrolled down the morning’s news alerts. Seeing nothing that alarmed him, he made his way into the bedroom to choose from his array of plain black and lifeless suits. With a man’s life on the line, Alec didn’t have time to dwell. 

  
On the other side of the city, New York’s best defense attorney was yet to take the bold step of exiting the comfort of his bed. Magnus Bane hated mornings with a vehemence that he didn’t allow towards much else. Bigots, people who didn’t close their mouths when they chewed, and mornings. The list was short, because Magnus had long since learned that anger wasn’t an attractive quality on him. Less than an inch off six feet, deep-set brown eyes, a full head of thick, dark hair, and smooth brown skin with warm, golden undertones, Magnus knew that he was an attractive man. He wasn’t ashamed of his self-assurance, knowing that any ounce of arrogance was appropriately counteracted by the deep sea of insecurities swarming under the surface of his bravado. 

His phone screeched with the morning’s final alarm, putting an end to his indulgence. Magnus flung the covers from his body with a sigh and traipsed his way into the kitchen. The kettle was strategically placed right at the edge of the counter, as close to the door as it could feasibly get. Whoever said a watched pot won’t boil had clearly never tested their theory before six in the morning, he mused. Carrying a steaming mug of black coffee to the bathroom, Magnus pondered over whether he should line his eyes with a delicate amount of blue to match the streak in his hair, or save the touch of colour for his outfit. Months ago, he’d been gifted the most delightful pocket square by his dear friend, Ragnor Fell. Cobalt blue with swirls of silver hand stitched into the satin, it was almost too special to wear. Extravagant, expensive, and out of place at the DA’s office, the little piece of luxury was absolutely the right choice for today. 

Clothes were Magnus’ armour, and today he needed more than a simple shield. He was the best defense attorney New York had to offer, there was no doubt about that, but there was a limit to what even he could do when the game was rigged. It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair, as one of his many foster mothers had told him countless times over the months he was in her care. She’d been right, of course, but the words had developed a new meaning with age. They were no longer a simple reassurance that he hadn’t stood a chance against the rowdy group of older lads who’d got it into their minds that they wanted to hurt him. Through an adult lens, he could see now that she’d been warning him of the systematic injustice that the worlds had to offer. The brutality, the corruption and the apparent distaste that anybody with a small slice of power had for doing the right thing. 

Magnus dumped his mug next to the sink and clambered into the shower. The wakening effect of the warm spray was almost as effective as the pot of caffeine waiting for him on the other side of the shower curtain. Twenty minutes later, he stood in front of his wardrobe, wrapped up in two of his fluffiest towels, deciding which shirt would pair best with his jet-black suit. In the end, he settled on a pastel pink button-down, smiling to himself as he folded the touch of blue into the top pocket of his jacket. Some subtle brown eyeliner, a touch of product to ensure his hair remained as gravity-defying as he liked it, and Magnus Bane was ready to face the impossibility that was going to be today. 

On his way to the door, he was almost sent tumbling to the ground by his coal-coloured cat’s attempts at smothering his ankles with affection. “Careful, Chairman,” he reprimanded, dusting off the unharmed jacket of his suit. “Don’t you know that you’re bad luck?” He sighed as he looked down at his pet, unapologetic eyes meeting his own. “Right now, daddy needs all the luck he can get.” 

He wouldn’t testify to it, but Magnus was convinced that somebody on the Sydney case wasn’t working entirely within the lines of the law. It wasn’t unusual for there to be a complete lack of evidence supporting a not guilty plea, but in this case, Magnus happened to believe that Thomas Sydney hadn’t committed the crime that he was on trial for. His job wasn’t to determine guilt, but over the years he’d developed a good sense of when he was being lied to. Magnus didn’t often take cases when he believed the defendant to be guilty, and he'd never been wrangled into doing so when the crime at hand was a violent one. It was a possibility of course, that there simply wasn’t any evidence that supported Sydney’s claims that he’d been on the other side of the city at the time of the murder, but Magnus was inclined to believe otherwise. 

If NYPD had looked harder for the evidence, he believed that it was there to be found. For a start, there was the DNA all over the victim’s body, hair fibers on her clothes not belonging to Thomas Sydney. The prosecution had argued that Alice had still been wearing the same clothes she’d worn to work; the hair could have easily been picked up from any of her customers or the twenty other sales assistants shifted in that day. Magnus knew that no real effort had been made to identify its owner, despite the fact that it could bear some sort of relevance. The problem was, Sydney was a convenient culprit. He ticked all the right boxes, and couldn’t provide an alibi. 

Many officers did live up to the promise they had made to their community to protect and serve, but too many of them were glory-grabbing, fame hungry bastards who wanted a pat on the back just for turning up and clocking in. They weren’t all the same, no demographic of people ever was, but to Magnus, the Sydney case reeked of the exact tick box policing that he’d grown to detest. 

Over the span of his career, Magnus had lost a total of three cases, each of which still inhabited their own corner of his mind even years later. Magnus Bane didn’t lose, but sometimes he did. Trials could go either way, and even when he had a mountain of damning evidence to prove that a man had only offered to loan their ex-partner money, not give it to them, there was no guarantee that the jury would come to that same conclusion. For that reason, Magnus avoided trials wherever possible, preferring to settle with the plaintiff on his own terms instead of betting on the judge and jury to give him an outcome he and his client were happy with. It was also the reason he hadn’t lost complete hope in the Sydney case, because even though the odds were stacked so heavily against them on paper, anything could happen at trial. 

  
Alec tapped a finger against his leg as he waited. There’d been no new developments in the courthouse that day, not that he’d expected there to be. He could recite every last detail in the Sydney case, down to the victim's shoe size and how their suspect took his coffee in the morning. Thomas Sydney was accused of murdering his wife after discovering that she was having an affair with her best friend, the maid of honour at their wedding. He’d seen versions of the same story play out dozens of times before, but this case had one important difference. Sydney was innocent in Alice’s murder, and Alec was intent on proving it. 

He’d been mulling it over all day, the best way to approach Sydney’s defense attorney. Alec had been watching him in action all day, the man’s blatant skill only reaffirming the choice he was about to make. He knew that if he went through with it, he’d be barreling through so many important lines, doing irreversible damage to his career if anybody ever found out what he’d done. To approach the prime suspects’ defense attorney with evidence that their client was innocent, it sent a shiver through him just to imagine the consequences, but Alec saw no other option. Larrimore had made it clear where he stood on the case, and to go over his head to someone more superior would be an easy way to ensure that the remainder of his time on the force was torturous. 

Right on cue, Alec spotted Magnus Bane striding down the steps of the courthouse. He felt uneasy, lingering behind for his chance to catch the man alone, but he could hardly drop into the DA’s office for a cup of tea and a chat. “Mr. Bane?” he called as soon as they were close enough. Bane turned his head, then quickened his pace as he caught sight of who the voice belonged to. Keeping his voice lowered, Alec scurried after him. “Wait, hold on!”

“DS Lightwood,” he called over his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be talking to me, and I know that you know that.” 

Alec swore under his breath, forced to throw caution to the wind else this all be for nothing. “I only need a minute.” He marched after the man, weaving through pedestrians as they reached the side of the road. 

“If you’re here to ask me to dinner, you’re going to have to wait until I’ve beaten you in court.”

“You’re not going to beat us in court,” Alec snapped. “That’s the problem.” 

Bane didn’t pause, but he did slow his pace. “I wouldn’t have thought that would be much of a problem for your lot?” His small frown betrayed his otherwise amused face. 

“Not for them,” Alec agreed, “but Thomas Sydney is innocent.” 

“I know that.” Bane didn’t miss a beat. “Which is why he’ll be walking out of here a free man this time tomorrow.” 

“You know he won’t be.” Alec fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt, anxious energy exuding out of him. “Not how things stand, anyway.” 

“DS Lightwood, are you about to do something rash?” 

Alec sighed. “It looks that way.” He dropped his hands to his pockets and began to speak. “I found something. Not enough to get him off, but enough to convince me that he’s innocent.” 

“Let me guess,” he muttered, casting Alec a sideways glance. “You already have your man, there’s no need to complicate it now.” 

“Exactly,” Alec confirmed. “You made a good case, but we need evidence.” 

Bane raised an eyebrow. “We?”

“I’ve had this for two days, but we’re running out of time,” he explained, ignoring the steady gnawing of nerves at his stomach. “You’re good, but you won’t find what you need in less than twenty-four hours. Not by yourself anyway.” 

“My, all these compliments.” He nudged Alec’s shoulder with his own. “Careful, or you might give me an ego complex.” 

Alec didn’t return the jovial tone. “You already have an ego complex. Now, will you accept my help or not?” 

Bane straightened his face. “You’re talking about undermining your superiors, colluding with the enemy,” he warned, letting the words hang between them. 

“Your place or mine?” Alec asked. 

Despite himself, Magnus erupted into a grin. “I have cocktails, and a cat.” 


	2. Two Strong Coffees and One Poor Impersonation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My no-wifi torture has been extended by up to 72 hours. It turns out that the previous tenants may not have cancelled their broadband, meaning that their old connection is screwing with mine. I'm running out of work-phone-3G to steal, and there's currently no internet at work either due to a series of other unfortunate events, so I can barely get any work done at the busiest time of the year... and I can't even watch any Netflix to forget about how stressed I am...
> 
> But I can't complain too much, as it looks as though they didn't cancel their electric either, so that might have saved me a bit of cash. Fingers crossed, I could bloody do with it. I can't tell if these people are really rich, or just really unorganised.
> 
> Moving on, I hope that you enjoy this chapter! Editing it gave me a small relief from the frustrations of life. Once again, comments are more appreciated than ever, as I am having a mostly terrible time of it at the moment! Thank you all for reading and commenting and supporting. I hope everyone reading this is doing well (better than me, anyway) and keeping safe.

“Can I get you anything?” Bane was pulling off his coat, one arm being somewhat of a nuisance. It was the least graceful that Alec could ever remember seeing him. Finally managing to free both arms from their cloth captivity, he looked up with a grin and asked, “Tea? Coffee? Vodka?” 

“Coffee would be great,” Alec replied, still pulling off his shoes at the doorway. He watched as Bane slung the offending article over the back of a chair on the way to the kitchen, ignoring the large wooden coat rack just to the left of the entrance. He wasn’t about to tell the man what to do with his own possessions in his own apartment, but he made sure to hang his own jacket in the designated space before following him into the kitchen. Alec let out a snort as he scanned the array of items strewn across the kitchen counter. “You weren’t joking, I see.” 

One bottle of vodka, two bottles of gin – different brands, from what Alec could tell – then a green bottle that he didn’t recognise and a large array of mixers, fruits, and seemingly decorative ingredients. Bane turned his head, eyebrows raised. “No, I wasn’t. Problem with that, DS Lightwood?” 

“Er... no, I...” Alec shook his head. “Not at all.” 

Police departments were hierarchy based, and it was an accepted practice to refer to your superiors with a term of respect, most often Sir or Ma’am. You were free to drop the professionalism within your own rankings, but in an environment where you were most commonly referred to by your status, it didn’t much matter. The people on Alec’s team, those that he worked closely with, he’d address them as he would anybody else, but they were the minority. For the most part, he wouldn’t be able to call somebody by their first name even if he’d wanted to. It presented a certain level of awkwardness on nights out, choosing between asking the people you’d worked with for months what their first names were, or committing yourself to ambiguity and hoping nobody noticed. 

So, it was most common for Alec to be referred to as Lightwood, Sergeant, DS Lightwood, or even just, ‘Oi, You,’ but for whatever reason, it didn’t sound quite right coming from Bane. Perhaps it was because he so clearly enjoying using the ranking as sardonic formality, or maybe it was just because he was watching the man make a cocktail in his kitchen, but Alec didn’t like it. 

Hands full of questionable substances that would likely keep Alec intoxicated for the remainder of the week, Bane directed him to the mugs and sugar in the cupboard above the kettle. Alec nodded in thanks, then decided to make use of the opportunity. “Thanks... uh, Magnus.” He didn’t stop to see the reaction, instead pouring an inhumane amount of coffee granules into a mug and completely ignoring the sweetener. 

“You’re kidding me?” 

Alec glanced up to see Magnus watching him, face scrunched in disgust. 

“What?” he asked. “I like black coffee.” 

Bane turned back to the concoction he was creating. “That’s not right, Lightwood.” He poured a measured amount of vodka into a glass, squinted at it, gave a small, unsatisfied hum, then began to pour freely from the bottle. “Haven’t you any empathy for your tastebuds?” 

“Oh, I don’t drink it.” Alec closed the cupboard. “Just inject it. Quicker that way.” He picked up the mug and made his way back to the living room, just catching Magnus’ snort on his way out. 

“So, you do have a sense of humour then?” he called from the kitchen. 

Alec didn’t respond. He’d sat across the table from Bane in more interviews than he could count after Sydney had been arrested. It was clear that the defense attorney thoroughly enjoyed winding up senior investigating officers, and he had a real flair for it too. Though he’d always maintained a highly professional demeanor, demonstrating just how capable he was in his role, Bane had never missed a chance to poke fun. 

He’d rubbed most of the team the wrong way, but Alec had never particularly minded him. Their frustrations were closely attached to Magnus’ success rate, and the fact that he’d successfully defended many a crook that they’d been determined to nail to the wall by various parts of their bodies. In their minds, Bane stood in the way of justice, but Alec wasn’t the only person on the force who believed that reform didn’t take place in an orange jumpsuit. Magnus defending a petty crook who’d shown nothing but remorse for their actions, getting them a fine and community service over jail time, wasn’t a loss in Alec’s book. But regardless of his personal opinion, he’d always had to maintain the unbothered, wall-of-stone façade expected of a Detective Sergeant. 

Bane emerged from the kitchen, carrying a long-stemmed glass of clear liquid that definitely wasn’t water. Topped off with a single red cherry, Alec couldn’t think of anything worse to consume before diving headfirst into a case of confusing timelines and intricate details, but if that was the fuel that the man needed, then he wasn’t going to question it. “Let’s get to it then.” 

Settling beside him on the couch, Magnus gave Alec a rundown of the case he’d built for Sydney’s defense. Most of it wasn’t new information, but it was helpful to hear it from Bane’s perspective. There were always the theories that you didn’t commit to paper, the small facts that weren’t important enough to present to a jury, but still niggled in the back of your mind as something that could be significant, if only you were looking at the whole picture instead of the bits and pieces you’d managed to pull together. “Well, that’s everything,” he finished with a sigh. 

Alec had been chewing on the inside of his lip, stopping just as he tasted the familiar tang of metallic flood along his tongue. “We need more than this.” 

“Care to share anything groundbreaking that you have to offer then, Sergeant?” In the face of Alec’s silence, he raised an eyebrow and muttered, “Thought not.” Bane took a sip of the clear concoction and sighed. “What changed your mind then? Brought you over to the right side?” 

Alec frowned at his analysis of the situation, but didn’t bother to offer an alternative. “I pulled footage from cameras that covered Sydney’s walk home from work, hoping to catch him on one of them. Exactly 5:14pm, I’ve got him withdrawing twenty dollars from the ATM machine on Byron street.” 

“That’s odd. He never mentioned withdrawing cash, just that he was late getting out of work and walked home as normal.” 

“He could have genuinely forgotten,” Alec suggested, flinching as he took a tentative sip from his still-boiling mug of coffee. “Seems like it’d be the least of his worries that night." 

“Once he’d gotten home and found his wife bludgeoned to death in their bathroom, you mean?” Bane sighed and lowered his head, pressing his thumb and forefinger against closed eyelids and working them in small circles. “The time of death was 5:30, Byron street is at least a twenty minute walk from Sydney’s home.” He pushed his fingers deeper and deeper into the sockets of his eyes until Alec began to worry that he surely must be hurting himself. “But time of death isn’t an exact science, and while it could create doubt in the jury’s mind, it could easily be undermined by Larrimore and his bulldog prosecutor.” 

There was one question that they’d avoided since Alec had approached Bane outside the courthouse. It was the one thing that could prove Sydney’s innocence without a doubt, and it had so far proved impossible for both men. “You know what we need?” 

Magnus reached over to the table at the side of his couch and grabbed a half empty packet of skittles. Pulling open the bag, he offered it to Alec who shook his head. “We need to find the person who did this, so we can prove that Sydney didn’t,” Bane announced, pouring out a generous helping of the sugar balls into his hand. “You think I haven’t tried that?”

Larrimore believed that their perp was behind bars, holding onto the soap for dear life, which placed significant limitations on the work that Alec could continue to do for the case. Running a background check, DNA test, or taking almost any other action in regards to a new potential suspect fell well into the area of Not Going To Happen. But that didn’t mean that he hadn’t been able to move forward at all. “How far did you get?”

“There’s one obvious alternative, but nothing to back it up.” 

Alec shook his head. “I thought that too, before we charged Thomas. Back when I could run forensics.” 

“Not him?” 

“Clean as a whistle.” Alec rolled his shoulders, listening to the pops that ran up his spine, the signs of a long day at work that was only going to get longer. “Did you know Alice was having an affair?” 

Bane opened his mouth, ever so slightly, before snapping it shut again.

“He didn’t tell you that?” Alec took the silent pout he received as a negative. “Two months ago, Alice was in a minor car accident. No-one was hurt, everyone’s insurance paid up, but police were still called out to the scene by a pedestrian who thought the crash looked more serious than it turned out to be.” Alec straightened his back as he regaled the story, trying to ease the discomfort of his overworked muscles. “I read the statements. I mean, it seems a bit far fetched that you’d have a vendetta big enough against someone who bumped your car that you’d come back and murder them, but you never know. The guy whose car was hit, kept referring to Alice and her girlfriend in the police reports.” 

“Girlfriend?” Magnus questioned. “How can you be sure?” 

“You can’t, from that,” Alec confirmed. “But I checked her Facebook.” It turned out that while Alice’s page had been rather scarce and her list of friends rather dull, one woman’s name had stuck out from the rest of them. Terra Louise - Terrin Louise Foster, legally - had set the security of her Facebook page to private, but had shown no reluctance to allow an old school friend, Amber Parry, access to her profile.

Bane’s face was a mixture of disbelief and amusement. “You made a fake account to see this girl’s Facebook?”

Alec smirked over the rim of his coffee mug, now cooled to an acceptable temperature. “She should have been more thorough if she didn’t want strangers on the internet seeing pictures of her and her girlfriend holding hands at Brighton pier.”

“You’re kidding me? These people are plastering their affair all over the internet?” Magnus tutted, muttering a string of obscenities under his breath. “Idiots.”

“Either she has no idea Alice is married, or she’s just really callous. These posts are really personal. Calling her the love of my life, my girl. It seems like it was serious, for Terra at least.” 

Bane stood abruptly from the couch and began to pace neat lines in front of his coffee table, back and forth, back and forth. “So, what, she finds out that Alice is married, gets her heartbroken, and kills her in a fit of rage?” 

“It’s more plausible than Sydney stopping off at the ATM, withdrawing twenty dollars, racing the rest of the way home in record time, murdering his wife and then calling the police in hysterics, all within a sixteen minute timeframe.” Alec watched as Bane paused his pacing just long enough to snatch the skittles abandoned on the couch and pour a decent portion into his hand. “It’s all well and good to theorise, but we need proper evidence.” 

Bane spun to face Alec and grinned. “Spoken like a true copper, but I’m afraid that you’re wrong this time. We don’t need evidence, we need reasonable doubt.” 

“You’re just gonna bullshit your way through it?” 

Pausing the tour of his living room, Bane threw himself back down onto the couch and flipped open the lid of his laptop. “I’m going to find out as much as I can about their affair, witnesses, pictures, timelines, and shove it down the jury’s throat until they’ve forgotten the name Thomas Sydney.” 

There was something bothering Alec, something not quite right with this whole thing. He dropped his head into his hands, sickness bubbling within him at the memory of Larrimore insisting that Sydney was as guilty as they come. If a person was innocent, there couldn’t be enough evidence to convict, yet somehow there seemed to be. “What about the DNA?” he muttered into the soundproofing of his own palms. 

“What was that, Sergeant?” 

Alec lifted his head. “What about the DNA?” 

“Your lot wrote it off as unimportant.” 

“I know that.” Alec turned to look Bane in the eye. “The hair was blonde.” He stood from the couch and paced a copycat line in front of the coffee table. “Alice and Terra worked together.” 

“Terra’s blonde.” Bane followed along with his train of thought. “You think the hair could be hers, but it’s too late to test it now.” 

“Cameras in the shop. CCTV.” 

That appeared to be the end of Bane translating his jumbled thoughts into sentences. He shook his head and offered Alec a blank stare.

“What if they snook off together in their break?” Alec questioned. “They worked together, they were having an affair. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.”

Bane pulled an expression of wanting to jump on board but not quite being convinced. “It could easily be argued that colleagues go for lunch together all the time.”

Alec reached for his phone, already tapping the buttons as Bane voiced his hesitance. Pacing the floor once again, he held the phone to his ear and listened to the dial tone. It was already past 7pm, and they were exceptionally lucky that the store Alice had worked at remained open until 10pm Monday - Saturday. On the third ring, the phone was picked up by a bored sounding employee asking how they could be of service and sounding as though it was the last thing on earth that they wanted to be. Impulsively, Alec introduced himself as Magnus Bane, defense attorney, and ignored the outrage on the real Magnus Bane’s face.

“I’m investigating a crime that entails one of your employees, and it would be especially helpful to her case if we could access the security footage from the night of the twelfth this month.” He paused, a better idea striking him. “Well, actually, every night this month would be even better.” 

Bane snorted from the other side of the room, watching the interaction with distaste. Clearly, he didn’t appreciate being impersonated by somebody as decidedly not-smooth as Alec. 

The kid on the other end of the line told Alec that he didn’t have access to the CCTV footage, but that he’d pass him along to someone who did. He sounded thrilled at the chance to be rid of him, passing the responsibility up the chain of command. That left Alec with the task of sweet talking somebody a bit less likely to be bluffed, but it turned out that at 8pm on a Friday night, most employees were bothered about anything other than what time they could go home. Technically, Alec hadn’t been lying when he said he was working on the case of one of their employees, and that the evidence would be of great service to her, he’d just left out a few subjectively important details.

“Got it.” Alec hung up the phone with a cheerful thank you, and a grin that certainly would have pissed him off had it been on the face of anybody else. “They’re emailing you now.” 

Bane stared back, offering a tight smile of nothing other than sarcasm. “Yes, I heard. I am sitting right here.” 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Alec replied, not bothering to straighten his face much. Though he swiftly - and silently - took back his apology once they opened up the attached security footage and scrolled to the most important date and time. Alice and Terra had not been shy about public displays of affection, with the cameras plastered all throughout the warehouse showing them entering with theirs hands clasped together, quickly swapping as much saliva as was conceivably possible, then making a beeline for the accessible toilet hidden at the back of the warehouse. There were no cameras there, but the one closest to the door caught them reemerging, half an hour later, decidedly less put together than they had been earlier in the day. Terra had missed a few buttons, they both had their uniform blazer jackets swinging from a single finger, and Alice hadn’t even bothered to put on her tights again, instead leaving her long, tanned legs bared to the world. 

“So her Facebook proves the affair, this proves that they were still together on the day Alice was killed, and that the blonde hair on the body likely belongs to Terra. Could have been from this interaction here,” Alec pointed at the screen, “or from later on in the evening.”

“When she killed her.”

Alec nodded. “Yeah, when she killed her.”

“So that leaves us needing a motive.”

“Motive, and a lack of alibi,” Alec added. “What was she doing the night of the twelfth?”

“That can be your job, Sergeant,” Bane chirped. “I’ll work on finding witnesses to corroborate her affair, and to give me a motive. What went wrong for Alice and Terra?”

Tuning out the musings of Magnus Bane - it turned out that the man had a habit of mumbling to himself about mostly everything - Alec kept working. It turned out that Terra didn’t have an alibi. He called her himself, this time not impersonating Magnus Bane, and apologised for the loss of her friend, Alice Sydney. Then he explained that he was a part of the team working to convict Alice’s husband, and that they were making routine enquiries to corroborate a witness’ statement. The statement was entirely made up, of course, but she didn’t need to know that. He explained that a friend of Alice’s had seen Thomas drop by at her work at around 5pm, just to surprise her, as husbands did. This witness had testified to seeing an argument break out between the couple, and Alec wanted to know if Terra had happened to overhear the same domestic bliss that the rest of the store apparently had.

She happily offered up the information that no, she hadn’t seen or heard a thing. They did argue a lot, the pair of them, but she hadn’t seen it that night. Her shift had finished at 4pm and she’d gone straight home and gotten in the shower. Had she seen Alice on the way out? No, she hadn’t. Had she seen much of her at work that day? No, not much. Had anybody been at home with her on the twelfth of August when she’d gone straight home from work to shower? No, just her.

“Well, that’s her without an alibi then,” Alec announced, hanging up the phone and throwing it against the couch with a little too much force. Bane didn’t respond, eyes fixed to the screen in front of him. Groaning as he pulled his sore joints and aching muscles from the couch, Alec traipsed into the kitchen and helped himself to a second killer mug of caffeine. He knew it was much too late for that kind of stimulant, but there were more important things to worry about than how red and puffy his eyes were going to be the morning after. They were making progress, more than he’d even thought possible, but the night was far from over, and Alec had no time to waste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. so sorry for any typos. It turns out that auto-correct doesn't work without bloody wifi, and I've forgotten how to bloody spell.


	3. a Lie of Omission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have wifi!!!!! Bloody finally.
> 
> This was so much fun to write, and I have everything laid out for the next few chapters, I just need to find the time to write them. I doubt this will end up being as long as my last fic - too much going on at the moment - but there's definitely going to be a few more chapters!
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

“So, there was talk of a cat, I believe.” Alec grimaced as he swallowed down the dregs from his second coffee of the night. He was going to have one hell of a headache in the morning. “Or was I led here under false pretences?”

Magnus looked at him. “You were led here under no pretences. Might I remind you that this entire scheme was your idea in the first place?” He followed suit with the remainder of his cocktail, then swooped into what Alec assumed was the bedroom, calling out on his way, “Chairman, we have a visitor.” There was a moment of silence, then he poked his head back around the door with a slight cringe, as if apologising for his pet’s apparent reluctance to greet his guest. “Chairman, you’re being rude, darling.”

“Chairman?”

“Well, Chairman Meow, but he doesn’t mind it being shortened.” 

It was likely the most endearing thing Alec had heard that month, the way Bane spoke about his cat. Not Bane. Magnus. While he took no issue with being referred to in whatever way was most convenient for the person calling him, he knew from prior experience that some people outside of the force thought Alec too callous, too impersonal. Maybe even a little rude. He certainly didn’t want Magnus Bane to think of him as callous, impersonal, or rude. “Don’t worry about it, Magnus. Maybe he’s just tired. It is almost midnight, after all.”

“Sometimes I think that it’s my fault, his behaviour,” Magnus mused. He leant against the door frame, one eye on Alec, the other on his devient kitten. “Perhaps the name gives him too much attitude.” 

There was a reasonable response to that statement, Alec knew that there was. He just couldn’t for the life of him lay his hands on it. Instead he asked, “Mind if I make another coffee?”

Magnus gestured to the kitchen. “Go ahead.” 

When he reemerged, fresh cup of steaming caffeine in hand, he stopped in his tracks at the sight that greeted him. Magnus Bane, New York’s best defense attorney, was sprawled across his couch, legs askew, one hand buried in the thick, black fur of his cat and the other dangling at what couldn’t possibly be a comfortable angle onto the floor. Chairman Meow purred contentedly, while Alec tried to decipher whether Magnus was asleep or whether he was playing dead to avoid the mountain of work waiting for him in the conscious world. In the end, he decided on genuinely asleep, and made his way over to the table with his coffee and borrowed laptop. 

The next two hours were spent with his eyes glued to a disgustingly bright screen, sifting through an entire month's worth of incredibly tedious security footage. In the end, he’d found enough footage of Terra and Alice sneaking a kiss when they thought nobody was looking, ducking out of work early with arms wrapped around one another, and heading down to the basement for some not quite safe for work activities, that it would be impossible for a jury to deny the validity of their relationship. Most things in life could be argued with one way or another, but their illicit romance wasn’t one of those things. 

It still didn’t prove that Terra had murdered her lover, but it offered an entirely new line of enquiry that NYPD and their bulldog prosecutor had failed to explore, or even identify. Paired together with what Magnus had managed to put together - after a ten minute power nap he’d jolted upright, much to Chairman’s dismay, and gotten back to work - Alec had significantly higher hopes than he had done the night before. It was a ridiculous cliché, but he really felt as though there was a spring in his step the entire way home. He didn’t make it to bed until past three in the morning, but he managed more sleep than he had in a longer time than he liked to admit.

In the morning, the day of the trial’s conclusion, Alec woke with a smile on his face. The duvet was smooth, lying flat on top of him. Not a wrinkle, crease or rumple in sight. He really had slept soundly. Only adding to his good mood, the morning’s traffic was much less rage-inducing than normal. Nobody endangered their lives, and that of those around them, by deciding to switch lanes on a roundabout with half a second to spare. Nobody demanded dominance of the outside lane with a car that was barely even roadworthy, and no pedestrians decided to dart out at the last millisecond, convinced that they could make it across the road before they’d be sharing a space with the car speeding towards them, shaving a few years off Alec’s lifespan as he lunged for the breaks in record time. It was lunacy, the should-be-standard things that brought him complete and utter joy, but in New York, the roads were a whole other breed of survival of the fittest.

He was moderately confident with what they’d managed to put together overnight, but also knew that it wasn’t as simple as waltzing into court with a folder full of emails, security camera snaps and witness statements and declaring, “This man is innocent!” There was a process to follow, rules to be abided by. Magnus was required to enter any findings into evidence with much more notice than two hours before closing statements. It could be argued that this was newly discovered evidence, and therefore the defense hadn’t been able to do that, but then prosecution could always claim that they needed time to see the evidence before attempting to dismantle it in front of the jury. Alec was a Detective Sergeant, and luckily he hadn’t had much experience with murder trials, so he really wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the day. 

But what he hadn’t expected was for the prosecution to calmly accept the defense’s new evidence, before announcing that they needed to call one final witness to the stand. This person hadn’t been a part of the enquiry or the trial, as they had only just taken the action that made them a viable witness, but their statement would apparently hold significant value in regards to the guilt of Thomas Sydney.

Even less was he expecting the witness to be none other than Detective Sergeant Alec Lightwood.

The prosecutor, Bulldog Ewans, was a sickly looking man in his late forties. His pale skin looked as if it had once been stretched over a much larger face, losing all tautness as he’d deflated, or perhaps he’d simply always looked that way. Bulldog wasn’t a nice man, and Alec never felt anything other than dread at the prospect of working a case that Ewans was involved with, but NYPD insisted that he was some sort of miraculous gift to the earth, and anything other than undying praise and admiration for him was blasphemy.

Bulldog waited for him to be sworn in, a gleam in his eyes that sent familiar unease coursing through Alec. They were on the same team, always had been, but in interview rooms, team briefings, corridor-passings-by, Alec had never said a word to him that wasn’t entirely necessary. He’d always sensed a huge amount of eagerness in the man to jump down the throat of anyone who disagreed with him, to get the maximum sentence, to declare guilty until proven innocent. Bulldog was a shoot-to-kill kind of man, and Alec didn’t like him one bit.

He caught his gaze straying to Magnus Bane and pulled it swiftly back to Bulldog’s sunken eyes. Not only should he not be looking at the man, he really shouldn’t be looking at the prime suspect’s defense attorney when called to give evidence for the prosecution.  
Five minutes into the ordeal, they’d done nothing but go over very simple facts of the case. Clarifying for the point of clarifying. Alec hadn’t presented any new evidence, and he hadn’t told anybody anything that they didn’t already know. He still had no idea why he was there, and he still didn’t know why Bulldog was almost bouncing on the balls of his tiny feet in excitement. 

It was the next question that caught him off guard.

“Do you believe the defendant to be guilty of murder, DS Lightwood?”

Alec frowned, careful with his wording. “Much of the evidence does point towards Mr. Sydney’s guilt, yes.” 

Bulldog Ewans took a step forward, a small smile growing on his mutt-like face. “Do _you_ think he’s guilty, Mr. Lightwood?” 

“Objection,” Bane called. “Mr. Lightwood isn’t here to determine guilt; you have a jury for that.” 

The judge agreed, ordering Ewans to move on.

“Your honor.” He nodded at the judge. “DS Lightwood, why were you at Magnus Bane’s apartment complex last night?” Bulldog cast a glance over to Magnus, before clarifying, “Magnus Bane, the defense attorney to one Mr. Thomas Sydney.”

Alec tried to force his lips shut, but he knew that he was gawping like an idiot. “How do you know where I was last night?” 

Bulldog just sounded bored. “Multiple witnesses saw you entering Mr. Bane’s apartment building late last night and leaving in the early hours of the morning, and they are prepared to testify to that. So, I ask you again, why were you there?” 

“Objection,” Magnus called, jumping from his seat. “The Detective Sergant’s personal life has absolutely nothing to do with the details of this case.” He looked over to where Bulldog was standing, eyes boring holes into the back of his head. “Neither does mine, for that matter.” 

This time, the judge disagreed. “When a DS has dinner with a defense attorney in the middle of a murder trial - that they’re on opposing sides of, might I add - that becomes our business. Mr. Lightwood, is it true what he’s saying?”

Alec swallowed down his guilt and nodded his head. “Yes, it’s true, your honour.”

She nodded at Ewans. “You may continue.”

He smiled at the judge, though Alec knew that it was a tame example of the grin that wanted to stretch out his already thin lips. “I’ll repeat the question, shall I?”

“He invited me.”

“He invited you,” Bulldog repeated, as if considering the plausibility of the statement. “Right, and why exactly did he do that?”

The jury’s eyes were on him now, all twenty four of them. Alec wasn’t used to being the star of the show, and he certainly wasn’t used to it while he was lying through his teeth.

 _Wrong._ He wasn’t lying. Alec couldn’t tell a lie, because if he did, he’d be perjuring himself, and no case was worth that. “You’d have to ask him that.”

Ignoring his suggestion, Bulldog pushed on. “What were you doing with Mr. Bane for approximately,” he looked down at his notes, mostly for show, Alec would assume, “five hours and twenty-six minutes?”

Five hours and twenty-six minutes. “That’s awfully precise for a casual onlooker, Ewans.” 

“What were you doing, DS Lightwood?” 

“What do you think we were doing?” Alec answered. His voice was calm, and he didn’t attempt to fight the heat he could feel itching its way onto his cheeks. “Use your imagination, Ewans.” 

Bulldog shifted a little where he stood, putting his right foot forward, then leaning back against his left. “You and Mr. Bane are in a relationship?” 

Too late now. He might as well commit. “That would depend on your definition of a relationship.” 

“Yes or no, DS Lightwood.” 

Despite how insignificant it might seem when looking at what he’d been doing last night, perjury was a line that he wasn’t prepared to cross. To Alec, those indiscretions had been a necessary evil, a last ditch attempt to save an innocent man from a lifetime of incarceration, but any laws he broke today would be with the sole purpose of saving himself. It seemed like a downward slope to completely stamp on his moral compass so early into his career. How could he ever expect to wake up to a smooth, unrumpled bed ever again?

“No, we’re not in a relationship.” 

Bulldog’s naturally downturned lips stretched upwards, almost straightening into a smile. “So what were you doing in his apartment last night?” 

“Having drinks, amongst... other things.” 

He’d always been an impatient fellow, Bulldog Ewans, and he charged right through the hints and subtleties to land on one crude and wonderfully vague demand. “Did you give Mr. Bane the evidence that he has brought forward in court today?” 

“No, I did not,” Alec replied.

Dissatisfied, Ewans' sunken eyes took on the resemblance of a sad clown as he asked, “Have you ever discussed this case with Mr. Bane?” 

“Yes, I have,” Alec confirmed. He relished in the opportunity to throw such an amateurish question back in Bulldog’s face, forcing the man to feel an ounce of the discomfort that he’d pushed upon Alec, even if it was only a momentary victory. “On many occasions. If I remember correctly, we discussed it first when he came to the station and introduced himself as Mr. Sydney’s attorney. Then I believe we discussed it at length when myself and DI Larrimore first interviewed Sydney. When someone is accused of murder, they do often like to have their lawyer actually in the room with them while they’re being interviewed.” _Tone it down, Alec._ “Would you like me to continue?” 

Bulldog huffed. “So, last night, no discussion of the case took place?” It seemed as though he’d lost ninety five percent of his questioning skills in the last five minutes, and Alec couldn’t help but be absurdly grateful. The man was a shit, but he was usually a lot more skilled than this. Alec could only hope that he managed to get off the stand before Bulldog recovered from his stumbling.

“I’m sure we’ll have mentioned it at some point,” Alec replied. “Would you like an exact rundown of everything we said and did last night, Ewans?” 

Sunken eyes bulged in the exact horror that Alec had been desperately hoping to induce. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, DS Lightwood. No further questions.” 

Alec straightened his back, held his head as high as he could manage, and forced one foot in front of the other at a reasonable pace as he exited the stand. He made a beeline for the back of the courtroom where he could pretend to listen to the closing statements away from prying eyes. When it was finally over, he was the first one out of the heavy wooden doors, entirely unwilling to face the repercussions of what had just happened. How did they know he’d been at Bane’s? Multiple witnesses, bullshit. Nobody was that observant, and the timing of it was just too coincidental.

He wasn’t sure where he was walking, only that he needed to slow his pace, fast approaching a sprint that would only raise even more questions.

“DS Lightwood.” 

_What now?_ “Yes?” he called, not turning around, not slowing down.

“Use your imagination?”

He spun around, relief taking over at the sight of Magnus Bane and his smirk. “Don’t smile, Bane. They’ll accuse us of colluding again.” 

Magnus took a few quick steps forward to close the gap between them. “Well,” he leaned in close, keeping his voice low and soft. “We did, in fact, collude.” 

“Yes, we did, and if Bulldog had asked me that question, I would have had to tell him the truth, but he didn’t.” 

“No, he didn’t, did he?” Magnus frowned as if deep in thought. “You know, NYPD might want to consider using a different prosecutor next time.” 

“I’ll suggest that, if I’m not fired.” 

“Well, when you present the huge amount of evidence you’ve found to support the conviction of a murderer, I think they’ll be more inclined to promote you.” 

Their moment of seclusion was over, the halls beginning to flood with people exiting the tension filled courtroom. Reporters were already finding new and inventive ways to try and secure a quote for their front page headline, two of them banging on the windows with a fake smile plastered over faces that looked as if they’d rather be crying. Technically, Alec was still on duty, but he had no intention of allowing himself to be found by anyone with a badge and gun. “I’d best go, before the rabble smash through the glass and murder us with their dictaphones. I’ll see you around, Bane.”

“One last thing,” Magnus called. He waited for Alec to turn before asking, “Bulldog?”

Alec snorted. “Yeah. Don’t you see the resemblance?”

“He looks more like a blobfish to me. Just, without the nose.”

If Alec typed ‘blobfish’ into Google the moment he was safely ensconced in his car, and spent five whole minutes in a fit of giggles as he pictured Bulldog Ewans’ face at knowing he’d been compared to the aesthetically challenged animal in the first image, nobody really had to know that. If Alec had known that the courthouse was the last time that he’d see Bulldog Ewans alive, he likely wouldn’t have laughed so hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love a good cliffhanger...


	4. Life, Lemons and all That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! My apologies for making you wait more than a week for the next chapter. September is the busiest month of teaching as it is, and when you add covid, a completely inaccessible internal system + no wifi at all in the building, it gets even worse! So that's been terrible. But I've been working on this all weekend, and the next chapter is also really close to being uploaded. It might even be today, if my back stops tormenting me every time I sit up straight to type. Though I think that might be unlikely. 
> 
> But, anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter! The next is coming as soon as possible, and I promise I'm not lying this time.

Up ahead the woman stopped. Alec gritted his teeth and slowed his pace. Not one thing had gone well for him that day. Perhaps that was slightly hyperbolic, but it was accurate enough. His attempt at slinking into hiding after the courtroom debacle had been abysmally short lived. Before he’d even managed to switch off his phone and start his car, Alec had been summoned back to headquarters with a three word text from Larrimore. It was nothing he hadn’t expected, a meeting with himself, the DI and Detective Chief Inspector Hartwell to discuss the importance of public relations and media coverage of the force. Alec could have scripted the conversation word for word, but its predictability didn’t make it any less humiliating. The final suggestion, to consider maybe not having dinner with the DA during a murder trial, especially one that had garnered a fair amount of media attention, especially with somebody as prolific as Magnus Bane, was the cherry on top of what had easily become one of the top five worst days of his life. 

The woman was still paused on the stairs ahead of him, scrambling around in her bag for an elusive set of keys, he would assume. Short of shoving his way past, all he could do was clear his throat and offer her a tight smile. _Hint hint, lady, you’re blocking the entire stairwell with your humongously oversized bag._ The glare Alec received in return almost had him laughing out loud. Or possibly crying. The lady seemed genuinely outraged that he wasn’t granting her free reign over every inch of the shared apartment block, putting his night on hold so that she could stand in whatever section of the corridor that most pleased her. But despite her blatant fury, she did move out of his way, leaving Alec to scramble up to the safety of his flat and slam the door behind him.

Shedding clothes along the way, Alec stumbled into his bedroom and collapsed on top of the duvet, barely mustering up the energy to pull out his phone and press the call button. It almost rang off, before a familiar, yet muffled voice chirped out from underneath his pillow.

“Alec! Hi!”

“Hey, Iz,” he grumbled, voice muffled to match his sister’s. Alec was alone now, but somehow it still felt necessary to bury his head away from the world. “You busy?”

“Nope.” She was jarringly cheerful in comparison to her older brother, as was often the case between the two of them. “Never too busy for you, Alec. Just watching that Grey’s Anatomy show Clary told me about. Oh, and drinking your blackberry gin. What’s up?”

He wasted no time in bringing Isabelle up to speed, beginning with his decision to corner Magnus Bane outside of the courthouse on the second to last day of Thomas’ trial. She’d been mostly kept in the loop with the Sydney case since Alec had been assigned, listening to his frustrations, concerns, and speculations about the not so pure intentions of certain officers. He knew immediately that his disclaimer about the relationship between him and Magnus, or lack thereof, had gone completely over her head. 

“Wait, so tell me more about you and this Magnus!”

“No, Isabelle,” he insisted, finally rolling over onto his back and rubbing at his tired eyes. “I told you, that’s not the point of this story. It was so embarrassing, Larrimore just sat there smirking while the chief was doing a shitty job of tiptoeing around the whole topic of Magnus’ gender. Pretending as though it didn’t matter, or he hadn’t even noticed.” Alec scoffed, glaring at the ceiling in an even more outrageous manner than the woman in the hallway. 

Despite her penchant for inserting herself into Alec’s love life, he knew that ultimately, Izzy would always respect the lines that he drew and stop before anything became intrusive. “I’m sorry, Alec. I know you wanted to keep things seperate.”

“Yeah, well. What can you do?”

There was nothing else to be said, and they knew it. Nothing could take back the events of the day, and while it wasn’t the end of the world, it wasn’t at all what Alec had wanted, and no words of comfort could fix that. He’d wallow in self-pity for a few hours, then head back into work with his head held high and his embarrassment masked as well as he could manage. Not embarrassment over his sexuality, embarrassment that it had spilled out of him in a court of law that he was shagging a member of opposing counsel. Something to live down, if nothing else. 

“So…” Izzy started, mischievous intentions all too transparent. “Is he handsome?”

“Oh, come on. Is that all you’re bothered about?”

“So he is handsome! I knew it!”

Alec huffed out a laugh, the closest he’d come to feeling calm since Bulldog Ewans had called him up to the stand earlier that day. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait, wai-” 

But his thumb had already put an end to the call. He dropped his phone onto the bed, then tutted as he remembered that he’d already taken off his watch. Twisting awkwardly, Alec pressed down on the home button and let out a groan as the time flashed up at him. It was way past 7, almost 8 o'clock now, and he couldn’t actually remember if he’d eaten anything that day. His lack of an appetite didn’t surprise him, or particularly bother him, but the fact that he only had a few hours left of the day, and it wasn’t even the weekend yet, definitely did.

In the ultimate personification of the saying _no rest for the wicked,_ Alec’s phone began to ring. He let out a noise closer to a growl than he’d have thought possible and glanced at the screen. 

Unsaved number. 

He ignored it. Then seconds later, the phone buzzed again. This time, a text.

<07773297630> _Alexander, it’s me!_

Alexander? The last person to call him by that name had been his mother, and Alec was almost certain that she wasn’t the one texting him. Before he could respond, the phone buzzed a second time, and a third, and a fourth.

<07773297630> _You know, father of Chairman Meow._

<07773297630> _Professional mixologist._

<07773297630> _Extremely talented defense attorney who you happen to be screwing._

Alec shook his head, but couldn’t quite wipe the smirk from his face. Who spoke like that? He hit the call button and waited as it dialed. Magnus picked up on the second ring.

“Alexander, I need your help.” 

“How did you know my name is Alexander?”

The voice on the other end of the phone somehow retained its smooth, silky quality even over objectively dreadful speakers. “I’m being followed.” 

Alec jolted upright on the bed. “Magnus, are you alright?”

“Yes,” he replied, almost imperceptibly out of breath. “I’m just peachy.” 

_Think of our image as a force, detective. How would it look if the press found out? You need to consider these things, if you ever want to make a career for yourself._

Alec swallowed, somehow worsening his cracked throat. “What do you need?”

The response was calmer, steadier than Alec’s. “I can’t explain over the phone, but I could do with you coming over, if that’s not too much trouble?” 

“I’ll be twenty minutes?” 

“Perfect.” 

He was pressing Magnus’ intercom in less than fifteen. Alec was a trained detective, and while his experience giving evidence in a murder trial was limited, his experience in mostly everything else was not. He’d been around long enough to tell the difference between a handshake and a drug deal, a genuine fender bender and poorly concealed drunk driving. Somebody sitting in a car waiting for their friend, or looking up directions, and a stakeout.

Two men in a van across the road. One was leaning back in his seat, eyes closed. The driver was sipping from a flask, likely strong black coffee in an attempt to pull the weight of both him and his companion. Lights off, car parked. If this wasn’t the tail Magnus had been talking about, Alec would happily stroll into the station first thing tomorrow morning and offer his signed letter of resignation.

Magnus buzzed open the front door and Alec made his way up to the apartment. He called out as he knocked, mindful of the likely hypervigilant man he was about to disturb. Unsurprisingly, Magnus swung open the door with all of his usual flair. Glitter around his eyes, a silver streak in his spiked black hair and a pink-tinged cocktail in hand. 

Alec turned down the almost immediate offer of a drink. “No, thanks. Just tell me what’s going on.”

“You suggested in court that you and I are seeing one another,” Magnus said, as though Alec could have somehow forgotten. “If you’re never seen at my apartment ever again after that, it raises questions.”

“So, we’re just maintaining our cover?” Alec’s brows pulled together involuntarily. “You think those guys down there are something to do with the Sydney case?”

“Possibly. Or something to do with… something else.”

Alec tutted. He was putting himself at risk for this, his entire career on the line should there be a repeat of what had happened earlier today, and Magnus couldn’t even give him a straight answer. “Bane, stop being cryptic. Who are they? What am I doing here?”

“It’s another case I’m working on,” Magnus replied, his eyes fixed somewhere on the wall behind Alec. “Looks like collateral damage from a drug deal gone wrong. The victim was a known associate of Joseph Keller.”

Alec tried to catch Magnus’ eye, to no avail. “I’m familiar with Keller. You’re not defending him?”

“Of course not,” Magnus scoffed, hands waving away even the mere thought of it. “Besides, he’s not the one being accused. The young man in custody was working for Keller’s competition.”

“So, those guys down there are working for Keller?”

“Either that, or it’s something to do with Thomas Sydney,” Magnus explained. He wandered over to the kitchen doorway and hovered, still clutching his drink, still not looking at Alec. “One or the other. I haven’t quite decided yet.” 

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Alec tried to ignore just how unsettled he felt. “What do they want with you? How long have they been here for?” 

“It’s likely an intimidation tactic. On and off for about a week or so, since my client was finally arraigned and his trial date set. So it could be in retaliation to that.”

_Five hours and twenty-six minutes._

“You don’t think it’s a coincidence that you’re being watched, then today Ewans managed to tell the courtroom to the exact second how long I’d been round here last night?”

“Well, it was to the exact minute, but-”

“Magnus!” he interrupted. “Not the time for semantics.”

He just sighed, resting his head lightly against the doorframe he was leant upon. “No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. But what’s the connection between him and our friends down there?”

“He was leaning on them maybe? He knows them somehow?” Alec was improvising on the spot and he knew it. Though he’d always had a suspicion that Ewans was less than entirely well-intentioned, there’d never been anything solid to back that up. He sighed and ran a hand through his thick tangle of hair. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Go ahead.” Magnus pointed to his bedroom door. “It’s through there.”

Pointedly ignoring the fact that he was in Magnus Bane’s bedroom, Alec kept his head down and made for the ensuite bathroom right at the back of the room. In, out, as quickly as possible. There was an audible intake of breath when the bathroom door he pulled open led not to a bathroom, but to Magnus’ extensive - and probably expensive - closet. Alec shouldn’t be looking. He knew that. This was a clear invasion of the man’s privacy, but it took him a second longer than it should have to tear his eyes away from what appeared to be a completely sheer, burgundy shirt with approximately two buttons to hold it together.

By the time he reemerged, drying his hands on his jeans, Magnus was mixing another drink by the window. 

“You sure you should be standing there?” 

“They deal in glocks, not sniper rifles.” 

Alec shrugged. “Still.” 

Magnus lifted his gaze then, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. Brown eyes met blue, and if Alec didn’t know any better, he’d say that he was trapped. Under their hold, unable to look away even if he’d wanted to. “Hm, are you worried about me, Alexander?” 

Clearing his throat, Alec was reminded of the fact that he hadn’t had a sip of liquid since his coffee that morning. It had been strong, even for him. “Paperwork,” he replied simply. Then added, “Mind if I get a glass of water?”

He tried not to smile as Magnus moved away from the window, settling instead on his couch. “Go ahead.”

Alec returned from the kitchen rehydrated and with his thoughts organised. Or, less disorganised, at least. “Did the guy do it?” 

“He says not.” 

Settling gently onto the opposite end of the settee, Alec placed both hands against his knees and forcibly kept them still. He fidgeted when he was nervous, and he couldn’t afford to let Magnus think he was nervous. “That’s not what I asked.”

“In my opinion, Justin had nothing to do with the death of Keller’s associate.”

Alec nodded, moving one hand to place it against his stomach. The last thing he needed was for it to start reminding him of his lack of nourishment. “Okay, so we need to prove that he’s innocent then, don’t we?” 

Magnus smiled at him strangely, leaning back into the array of pillows he seemed to have built up all around himself. “That’s my job, Alexander, not yours.” 

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “The sooner it’s over, the sooner I can stop babysitting you.” 

In the end, he couldn’t quite manage to shush the rumblings of his hunger, and Magnus insisted on feeding him. There wasn’t time to cook, they both agreed on that, and neither of them were particularly enthusiastic about the options of beans on toast or a beef and tomato pot noodle each, so Alec offered to get them a takeaway. Magnus readily agreed, though insisted that since he was the guest, there was absolutely no way in hell that he would be paying for the food. Not even his own. So, it was safe to say that Magnus was a gracious host, even if Alec did feel unreasonably guilty at costing him approximately ten extra dollars for the boiled rice and chilli tofu. 

They ate as they worked, with both men working through a pile of case files bigger than any pot of coffee that would have made the task bearable. Something about the smiling face of Jordan Weisler - Magnus’ murdered drug dealer - was irritatingly familiar to Alec. Perhaps he’d arrested him some time ago, back when he’d still been working traffic. The guy had a rap sheet longer than his unruly mop of hair. It wasn’t until their plates had been scraped as clean as they were going to get without a dishwasher, and the creased manilla folders that were going to feature in Alec’s nightmares had almost all been flicked through, that Magnus broke the amicable silence with a question.

“How did it go at the station?” 

Slightly unprepared for the question, Alec stammered over a few false starts before finally admitting, “He wasn’t exactly pleased, but the stuff we found on Terra did seem to tamp down his anger.”

“Could’ve been worse, then?” Magnus offered.

“Much worse,” Alec agreed. He dropped the folder he was holding and straightened his back in an attempt to ease some of the pain he’d induced with his hunched over position. "It’s weird, I’d always thought that it’d be when I got into a relationship that I’d have to stop evading all comments about my personal life. You know, if I came into work one day wearing a ring, and people asked why I’d never mentioned a girlfriend. You’ve got to stop avoiding it then, don’t you?” He let out a small laugh. “But, no. I couldn’t just keep it simple, could I?” 

“You certainly don’t do things by halves, Alexander.” 

Alec looked across at him. “You never told me how you knew my name.”

Reminiscent of childhood antics, friends teasing one another over a piece of gossip in the playground, Magnus tapped a finger lightly against the tip of his nose and grinned. “I wasn’t even sure you were interested in men,” he remarked, the topic reversed instantaneously. “Normally I can tell, but you’re a very closed book.” Then, seemingly unplanned, he added a teasing, “Alexander,” to the end of his sentence.

Tutting, Alec snatched up the file closest to him and began to scan the open page. He’d read it before, he quickly realised, but Magnus didn’t know that. 

“Spoilsport,” Magnus moaned. “I looked you up, alright? Happy now?”

Alec was. Jovial, in fact. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he continued to scan the page that he’d already read and gave a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders. 

Magnus ignored the pile in front of them and twisted in his seat to face Alec head on. “Has anyone given you a hard time?” 

“No-one’s mentioned it, but I almost wish they had,” Alec admitted. “I know people have heard, and if they’ve heard, then I know they’re talking about it. So the fact that no-one’s said anything makes me think that they’re not saying anything nice.” 

“You’ll always get some,” Magnus told him, all sounds of teasing gone from his voice. “There was no coming out for me at work, I just was who I was from day one. Most people never even gave it a second thought, but you always get some. Comments, looks. People think you’re being paranoid, but when it’s happening to you...” 

“You know.” 

“Yeah. You do.” 

“Sorry,” Alec offered. 

Magnus smiled. “Me too, in advance.” 

It was probably for the best that his phone chose that exact moment to burst into the sing song of his overly cheerful ringtone, because Alec had entirely run out of things to say. He wasn’t happy to see Larrimore’s name plastered across his screen, but he knew that he’d be better to answer than avoid it. Probably just calling to give him one last reminder that he was an embarrassment to the force. Or to tell him that he’d been replaced by somebody who was actually worth paying a wage. Either way, Alec wasn’t expecting for the news of Bulldog Ewan’s death to be somberly recounted by a genuinely upset-sounding Larrimore. 

Before Alec could even express his condolences, his shock was quickly overtaken with trepidation as he was instructed to report straight to Larrimore’s office first thing tomorrow morning. Detective Chief Inspector Hartwell wanted to see him. If one bollocking a week by the chief wasn’t bad enough, it looked as though Alec was about to be subjected to another. The only thing he couldn’t wrap his head around, was why?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. I just changed the total number of chapters to five, but I promise that everything will make complete and total sense in the end, even though it's all still a bit up in the air at the moment. The mysteries will all be solved, and perhaps there'll even be a new beginning between our boys...
> 
> ;)


	5. Highschool Sweetheart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I know I said this would be up yesterday, or the day before, but in my defense, I thought yesterday was today... as in, I've been so busy that the days are morphing together, and I genuinely thought today was Tuesday. So I don't actually know what happened to Tuesday. Like, did I go to work? Was I actually conscious? Because I don't seem to remember a thing! 
> 
> But anyway, it's here now, the final chapter. I've gone a lot more plot-based on this fic than any other, probably because I'm starting to take thing whole writing thing more seriously, working on my own projects etc, so I wanted to push myself a bit with the plot instead of just writing cute shit. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love writing cute shit, but I'm trying to find a bit of a balance. So, what I'm trying to say is, while this may be a little different from what I usually write (maybe, or maybe it's exactly the same and I'm just overthinking) I've really enjoyed writing it, and appreciate all of the lovely comments and feedback! So thank you!

“Help me wrap my head around this, DS Lightwood. If you were nowhere near the scene of Dominic Ewans’ murder, why is there a witness of you leaving the scene at the approximate time of death?”

It had been fourty-five minutes since the interrogation-but-not-interrogation had begun, and Alec was starting to sweat. The room was stiflingly hot to begin with, and added to that was the general discomfort of being questioned, but not questioned, but definitely questioned, in regards to the sudden and suspicious death of a colleague who he’d been at blatant odds with in the hours before his premature demise. Alec had gone over where he was last night three times already. He’d expressed his condolences for Dominic Ewans’ death, and he’d informed both DI Larrimore and DCI Hartwell that he had absolutely no idea why somebody matching his description had been seen leaving the scene of the crime at the approximate time of his death. 

“It must have just been somebody who looked like me.”

“Of course.” Larrimore nodded. “Yes, you did say that. So then, just to clarify, the alibi you’re giving us is that you were with Magnus Bane? The same Magnus Bane you were with the night before? Correct?”

Alec told them, again, that yes he had been with Magnus Bane last night, and the night before that. He didn’t bother to acknowledge the fact that, not two hours after he was warned of the consequences of fraternising with the enemy, he’d gone ahead and done just that, consequences be damned, only now it was coming back to bite the entire NYPD in its gigantic behind. Imagine the embarrassment if a slimey sod news reporter got hold of the information that Detective Sergeant Alec Lightwood was being questioned in connection with the death of one of NYPD’s own prosecutors. Having to explain, “No, don’t worry, he has an alibi. He was shacked up with opposing counsel, after we explicitly described to him in great detail exactly why that would be a terrible career choice.”

“Okay, well that all appears to be in order, DS Lightwood. We appreciate your time and patience this morning,” Larrimore droned on, reading from a monotonous script he’d clearly memorised decades ago. “Just best to make sure everything’s done by the book. You understand, of course.”

Alec understood. He understood perfectly. Pained smile in place, he thanked both men and stood to leave.

“Oh, and before you go, we’ve brought Terrin Foster into custody. She still maintains that she had no idea Alice was having an affair.”

“No?”

DCI Hartwell shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll crack eventually. They always do.”

“So she’s admitting to the relationship, but just denying that it was an affair?”

“She says that Alice never told her. That apparently, Alice had only ever been in one other relationship apart from her. Or so she thought.”

“Sydney?”

“No, some highschool sweetheart. They broke up so messily that it put Alice off relationships for almost a decade, according to Terrin. Though now she’s realised that she was fed a whopping pack of lies, course.” He raised an eyebrow, eyes fixed on Alec. “Well, she realised it months ago, ‘cording to you.”

Alec didn’t flinch at the implications of the DCI’s words, barely even registered them. He was too focused on the first part of that sentence.

“What name did she give? For this... highschool sweetheart?”

“She only had a first name,” the DCI replied. He didn’t rush his words, either enjoying the drawn out misery of his DS, or simply having no place else to go. “Jordan, she said. Broke Alice’s heart into so many pieces, she was scarred for life.” Plump face entirely unimpressed, Hartwell’s eye roll gave away his own pessimism towards the girl’s youthful melodramatics. “Never dared venture into the tortuous world of love and lust ever again. Statement read far too much like a teenage girl’s blog post if you ask me.”

Alec mumbled a half hearted agreement and thanked the DCI again, this time only giving a nod in Larrimore’s direction. It had been hard enough to smile at him once, and to do it again unprompted was out of the question. The second he was out of that stifling, suffocated room, Alec pulled out his phone and shot off a text before making his way down into the canteen. If anything was going to get him through the day, it was going to be caffeine.

Magnus Bane slapped a palm across his face as he read DS Alec Lightwood’s text message. Jordan Weisler had been in a relationship with Alice Sydney back in highschool. It made so much sense, it seemed almost criminal that he hadn’t pieced it together earlier. Alec had voiced his theories that Ewans had been on the take, turning a blind eye to all sorts of dirty happenings for his own profit. He was a well respected prosecutor in the eyes of the NYPD, meaning he could get away with all sorts of things, no questions asked. From witness tampering to burying evidence, Ewans was in a prime position to pick and choose who waltzed from the courthouse with a clear name, and who rotted behind bars with nothing to show for it but a clean conscience. 

Terrin Foster hadn’t murdered Alice Sydney, and neither had her husband. In an unhappy marriage, Alice had been involved with multiple partners behind her husband's back. One of whom had been Terra, and another, Jordan Weisler. Her highschool beau had fallen far from the rails since the day of his last detention, but it didn’t seem that Alice had been deterred by that fact to the extent that she perhaps should have been. Terra had been telling the truth when she’d sworn her ignorance over the matter of Alice’s marriage. She truly had loved her girlfriend, and it seemed that Jordan had too.

Justin Hargreaves had been wrongfully charged with Jordan Weisler’s murder. The boy had never been a killer. Magnus had spotted that from a mile away, it was the reason he’d taken on the case pro bono in the first place. The fact that he’d even been arrested was somewhat laughable, in Magnus’ humble opinion. Jordan had run with a bad crowd. Drugs, guns, trafficking. Perhaps he’d seen something he shouldn’t have. Perhaps he’d gotten too comfortable with Alice, trusted her with information that should never have left his lips. Or perhaps he’d even tried to quit, get out of the game that never let you go. Whatever the reason, he hadn’t been killed in a lowly drug deal gone wrong, he’d been targeted. Alice too.

It was the only explanation as to why they’d been murdered in the exact same way within hours of one another. Magnus would bet his last penny on it even being the same murder weapon. It would be different for Ewans, though. Jordan was silenced, and Alice was collateral damage. Dump the first body in the wrong part of town, then follow Alice home, splatter her blood all over the cold, marble tiles of her ensuite bathroom, and leave the body for her husband to find. She was having an affair, so it was plausible that Thomas had been the one who’d battered her to death. In the mind of the person who was actually responsible, at least. 

Both crimes had been neatly covered up, possibly with the help of Ewans, though it was too late to prove much in that regard. But this time was different. When a respected prosecutor dies, nobody assumes anything. The case would be taken more seriously than Jordan and Alice’s combined. Whichever one of Keller’s lackey’s had been delegated body number three, might even have been tasked with the job of a more comprehensive cover up. Something to really throw the sniffer dogs off the scent, and who was a more plausible suspect in the death of Bulldog Ewans than the man who’d just taken a metaphorical swing at him in open court?

None other than Detective Sergeant Alec Lightwood. 

  
Alec could feel the beginnings of a headache needling its way into his brain. He’d requested for all files to be sent over pertaining to Jordan Weisler’s murder, pulling in a favour or two since it wasn’t Larrimore’s case. DS Maia Roberts was now expecting multiple rounds on Alec the next time they found themselves out on an after-work-sorrow-drowning mission. The files alone likely wouldn’t have been worth the tab he knew he was going to rack up, but Maia had gone above and beyond when he’d told her about his interrogation that morning. Mere hours later, she’d waltzed up to him with a stack of papers and a smug grin, slid them over the table to Alec and swaggered away. It turned out that Alice and Jordan had frequented the same Hilton hotel twice a week, every week for the last five months. They hadn’t even bothered to switch it up from a Tuesday and a Friday.

Quite honestly, Alec couldn’t wrap his head around how on earth she’d had the time for it. Or the energy. Which was a thought that he’d expressed to Magnus promptly after inviting himself over to the man’s apartment for their third rendezvous of the week. Once he’d secured the files from Maia and put in a reasonable day's work, heading over to the much more luxurious apartment of Magnus Bane had seemed like the only logical thing to do. Magnus hadn’t seemed to mind much, ushering Alec inside and telling him that he hadn’t made a single bit of sense in his ramblings over the intercom, and that he was going to have to start from the beginning.

“Alice was seeing them both on the side,” Alec explained. “Jordan and Terra.”

“Well, I’d put that together from your text, if I’m being honest,” Magus drawled. “The pair of them ending up dead on the same day, I can pretty much piece that puzzle together. But it’s Ewans ending up dead that I just can’t wrap my head around.”

Alec looked at him. “I’ve got mountains of evidence that Jordan and Alice were seeing each other before they died, now we just need to prove that Ewans was on the take.” He picked roughly at the skin around his thumb, ignoring the beads of red that began seeping to the surface. “Without that, this is all just guesswork.”

Magnus sighed, in agreement with Alec but not at all enthusiastic about the monotonous task that lay ahead of them. “Right then,” he chirped, tone far too upbeat to be anything less than sarcasm. “Let’s find the needle in this haystack.”

The task lacked any logical starting point, with the only objective being to read through each case file that had Ewan’s name attached to it, looking for anything that didn’t quite make sense. If Ewans had dotted his I’s and crossed his T’s, they’d be embarking on a wild goose chase, but Alec had a feeling that as soon as he found the right thread to pull on, the rest of the haystack would come tumbling down around them. 

Magnus made it through two whole pages before flouncing away from the table over to his drinks cart. He offered one to Alec, who refused, as usual. It wasn’t until halfway through his tenth file, or maybe his eleventh, that Alec glanced at the clock. “Ten already? You’ve got to be joking me?” He dumped the papers onto the table with a disgusted look on his face. “This is getting us nowhere.” Alec sighed and dropped his head into his hands with a heavy thunk. 

Magnus had the strange urge to curl a hand through his thick, black hair, and tug. Thankfully, before he had time to question the odd desire, Alec was speaking.

“Did you have one?”

“One what?”

Alec motioned at the picture in front of him, Jordan Weisler. “You know…”

“Oh.” Magnus pulled an unhappy face. “I did. We were madly in love, going to get married and grow old together,” he recalled. “You know, like everybody else in high school. Funny how it never ends up happening.”

“It did for my brother,” Alec told him. “Met when they were seventeen, fell completely head over heels for each other. I figured it was just one of those things, would pass it as quickly as it had come, but no. They got married last year, still just as infatuated as they were the day they met.”

“Wow.” Magnus gave a slight nod of his head. “So he had a real life love story? You don’t hear many of those anymore.”

Alec smiled, more wistful than anything. “No, you certainly don’t.”

Silence fell once again, each of them half-heartedly shuffling papers around the table, reading the same lines again and again with nothing really making an impact. “What’s his secret?” Magnus asked.

“I don’t think there is one. If there was, Jace certainly wouldn’t have figured it out. He’s next to useless,” Alec said with a smirk. Then a shrug. “I think it’s just, if it’s not the right person, it won’t last.”

“So he was just lucky? Meeting the right person early on?”

“I guess so. If that’s what you’d want.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Well, not that I wouldn’t want to, or that it hasn’t worked for Jace and Clary. Just that, if I’d have met someone in high school and stayed with them, there’s so many things I could have missed out on,” he explained, waving his hands around to convey his jumbled up thoughts. “Would I ever have joined the force if I had someone waiting for me at home? It’s long hours, miserable work sometimes. Would it still have been what I wanted?” He looked at Magnus then, as though he really wanted an answer from the other man. “I might never have moved to the city, just stayed in that little town I grew up in. There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with that, I guess, but I like my life how it is. Mostly.”

Magnus was nodding slowly at Alec’s words, all pretence of flicking through the files in font of him abandoned. “You’re right. I do love my life, most of the time, and I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished.” He paused then, glancing between Alec and the wall behind him. “I just can’t help being a bit of a romantic at times.”

“You want the fairytale ending?”

“Don’t you?”

Alec opened his mouth, then cursed as the ringtone of his phone began to blast through Magnus’ loft. “Shit, sorry,” he scrambled up from the couch, dislodging a few papers on the way to where he’d dumped his jacket. “One sec, sorry.” 

The missed call was from Maia, her voicemail telling him to call her as soon as he got the message. Images of a suspension, a front page feature in an article titled, ‘NYPD Detective Charged With Murder?’, and another body lying under a SOC tent somewhere in the dark, drizzle-filled night had Alec tapping furiously at his keypad, offering Magnus an apologetic glance as the other man continued to trawl through the remaining files on the table.

Maia didn’t bother with a hello, which didn’t surprise him. It was one of the things he appreciated most about her, the to-the-point attitude that always got the job done. “The plates you gave me, I ran them. Turns out your boys didn’t use fakes,” she explained, voice distorted over the phone’s abysmal speakers. “Cocky bastards. Known associates of Keller, as expected. Then in a stroke of pure genius, if I don’t say so myself, I matched the phone number registered to one of them with the number that called in the tip about a person matching your description leaving the scene.”

She went on to explain that the weapons used in both Alice and Jordan’s murders had been tentatively matched by the doc who’d done the post-mortem, and was due to be formally identified as quickly as was humanly possible. Alec relayed the information to Magnus, smiling at the man’s delighted grin. That got Justin Hargreaves off the hook, the teen who’d been wrongfully charged, and who would now be rightfully acquitted. With a formal statement of apology from the NYPD, if Magnus Bane had anything to say about it. 

While it might not be enough to get a conviction for Ewans’ murder, it was a good start, and it was enough for them to put a pin in it, at least for tonight. Alec thanked Maia, promised her an even heavier night out when this was all over, and hung up the phone. “Looks like we can stop with all this, then.”

“You’re calling it a night?”

“Might as well. Maia’s on it, there’s not much more we can do here. There’s no way Justin won’t be released when we get a positive match on the murder weapon, and hopefully the fact that Larrimore’s anonymous tip came from one of Keller’s goons will be enough to keep the chief off my back.” He stepped over piles of papers that had started out as organised, but now looked more like an avalanche than a tower, and perched on the edge of the couch. “I really appreciate all of your help with this, Magnus. I know it wasn’t exactly conventional.”

“Being a bit generous with your words there, aren’t you?” Magnus snorted, then added, “Don’t thank me, Alexander. You helped me too, remember?”

It was time to leave now. There wasn’t any reason to stay, not now they were finished for the night. Really, since they weren’t going to be working together anymore, there wasn’t any reason for Alec to come back here. 

“Now that you’re technically off the job… are you sure I can’t tempt you with the offer of a drink?”

Alec glanced up at Magnus, at the shy smile in place as he made to stand from the couch. “Yeah, sure, why not? One can’t hurt,” he agreed.

It was true that one couldn’t hurt, but both men had just struggled through a handful of exceptionally difficult days, and to think that they were actually going to stick to one drink, was certainly one of the more naive things that they’d told themselves that week. One led to two, then three, the usual cliché. 

Alec wouldn’t go as far as to say that he was head over heels in love with Magnus Bane, but he wasn’t ashamed to admit that he’d never felt such excitement at someone’s knee brushing lightly against his own before. He told himself that night, that it wasn’t as perfect as it all seemed to be. It was just the alcohol easing things along. But when he checked his phone the next morning to find a text from Magnus, just a simple good morning, he knew that all the vodka oranges in the world couldn’t have him as elated as those two small words from Magnus Bane. Maybe it wasn’t love, but it certainly was something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there we go! I know the ending is a little open-ended, but I hope it doesn't seem unfinished to anybody. I think we resolved / answered the plot points, and Magnus and Alec are in a perfect place to start getting to know each other a bit more. I know we didn't see much of an actual relationship, but I wanted to focus on their interactions beforehand, how they worked together and started to fall for each other without even trying. 
> 
> So, yeah, thank you all for reading! I really hope you enjoyed the ending <3

**Author's Note:**

> Hello lovely people. I hope you enjoyed the read! 
> 
> ash x


End file.
